Lesson from Adipurush: Cynical use of religion will backfire
No amount of devotional fervour can cover a poorly-written and executed film. The audience, not political patrons, are the ultimate arbiters of your fortune.
Fire, once lit, is hard to control, and could very well burn even those who had first set it. Ironically enough, this is one of the lessons we learn from the Ramayana’s Lanka dahan episode, writes Pooja Pillai. (Photo: PR Handout) Something strange happened on June 16, when Adipurush, the new big screen adaptation of the Ramayana starring Prabhas, Kriti Sanon and Saif Ali Khan, finally hit theatres and the early audience reactions began coming in: Reports of theatre audiences laughing at what were supposed to be poignant scenes, tweets and posts poking fun at the film’s botched CGI and raging against poorly-written dialogue (which is now being revised). Surely this was not what the makers of the film had expected in the days leading up to the release of the film, when all one heard of was how much bhakti has gone into the making of the film, that there would be a seat “reserved” for Lord Hanuman in every movie hall as an act of reverence and that actors Ranbir Kapoor and Ram Charan had bought 10,000 tickets to donate to “orphans and old age homes” (based on what one is hearing about the film, the last probably counts now as an act of cruelty against our most vulnerable)?
With threats of violence and calls to ban what he has described as his labour of love and devotion, surely director Om Raut is feeling most put upon. Consider the groundwork he had laid for the film to make the most of the current political mood in the country. The only reason he felt confident enough to make Adipurush, he said in an interview, was “Prime Minister Modi” who, he said, “gives us the power to come out and tell the stories that we want to tell…the confidence, the sense of being protected…the way we feel strongly as an Indian, Bharatvasi hone ka garv (the pride we feel in being Indian)”.
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